Philippians (Lesson 15)

Thanks to every one of you for tuning in today.

I'm Brother James.

I greet you one more time in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

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We have been studying the Bible book of Philippians on the last couple of broadcasts.

We've been talking about this idea that is set forth in Philippians 1, that it is far better to depart and be with Christ than it is to stay alive in these bodies on this earth.

We were talking as we ran out of time on the last program about the passage in Romans chapter 8 that says in no uncertain terms that as long as we are in these mortal bodies, we are going to groan within ourselves, waiting for and longing for the day when Jesus comes to set us free from these houses of clay.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Now He set us free from sin the moment we trusted His finished work and received everlasting life through the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, but we are longing for the day when the consequences of the fall of man, which so evidently work themselves out in our bodies from day to day, are a thing of the past.

So in Romans 8.23, I know we're studying Philippians, but we we've got to finish this Romans passage before we can get back to Philippians.

In Romans 8.23, the Bible says, Not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves.

Now this is not physical suffering in the body, this is internal suffering in the soul.

Why would the inner man, the born again man, new life from the Holy Ghost, who is eternal, why would he groan and travail in pain?

Waiting for Jesus to come again.

Think with me.

I've been in churches for decades.

And when you take prayer requests, here's what you get.

Pray for Susie, she is sick.

Pray for Bobby broke his arm.

Pray for Billy, he's skinny his knee.

Pray for Sally, she has a toothache.

You'll hear thirty prayer requests about aches and pains in the body before anybody raises their hand and says, Would somebody pray for me?

I'm sick and tired of hearing filth on my job all day long.

The curse words are getting into my mind and defiling me.

Will somebody pray that God would sanctify my ears?

Think about it.

Is there something inside you that groans when you see pornographic images on highway billboards and magazine covers in the checkout line of the grocery store?

Is there something inside you that groans when you see mothers dressing their daughters like prostitutes to send them off to school?

Is there something inside you that groans when you see thirteen and fourteen year old boys listening to cop killing parrot hating god defying rap?

Is there something that groans inside you when you just look around and say why are there so many hateful, blind, stupid, vain people?

Isn't there something inside you that looks around and says, God get me out of this dump?

I'm talking about all day you feel good, no headache, no backache, no disease.

Don't you just look around this world and say, God, I don't want my kids to have to see this?

Why should my wife have to listen to this language in a restaurant?

Why should I have to hear this music?

I can't even go to the store without hearing somebody enticing me to fornicate over the PA system.

Don't you get tired of it or you have you just become accustomed to it?

Isn't there something inside you that says, Oh God, could you take me to a place where everyone is holy?

Can you take me to a place where everyone is decent?

Can you take me to a place where everybody loves the Lord?

You know sometimes we just get onward Christian soldiers marching us to war and we get out there and hand out gospel tracts and hold our signs and preach the gospel, and it doesn't even bother us that people are giving us the finger and cursing Jesus.

Look, I can take it.

But I'd sure rather be in a place where if I said praise the Lord, everybody there shouted hallelujah.

Wouldn't that be nice?

I don't know about you, there's something inside me that just gets fed up with this world.

I'd like to be in heaven.

It'd be a wonderful thing.

Around this world today, communists, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, and people of various religious and political persuasions are killing people because those people are Christians.

Wouldn't you like to go to a world where such things do not happen?

That'd be a wonderful thing.

Right now on soil from one end of this earth to the other, the blood of innocence is being poured into the ground as wars and conflicts and violence rage, testifying to the fact that man cannot be satisfied.

Wouldn't you like to go to a place where such things never happen?

I'm looking forward to going to a place where boys and girls don't grow up orphans because mother or father were murdered for the simple crime of putting their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

I'm looking forward to going to a world that doesn't hate my Savior and hate his people.

I'm looking forward to going to a world where people don't lose their lives and their property and their homes and their families because they love the Savior.

I'm talking about on days when you're feeling good, got money in the bank, gas in the car, and everything's going fine in the family.

Don't you ever just walk by the news rack and see the headlines on that newspaper and think to yourself, God get us out of here?

Wouldn't it be wonderful to never have to hear another lie?

Never have to be the subject of a false report, never have to hear another story about how crooked Christians are and how rotten preachers are, and most of those stories told by people who say they're saved.

Wouldn't it be great to just get in a place where everything that has breath is praising the Lord?

I don't know about you.

Sometimes my insides just groan.

I'm not hurting, I've got it good.

But sometimes this world just wears you out.

You know what?

We're going to a place.

All of us that are saved, we're going to a place where not only is sickness, sorrow, pain, and death a thing of the past, but all of this all of this grief and trouble, kidnapping, baby napping, child molesting, kids stolen from their parents.

One day, one day we're going to a place where none of that will ever happen.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

Second Corinthians chapter four continues this idea.

Only in this passage we're dealing with the physical aches and pains.

The Bible says in Second Corinthians four, verse number sixteen, for which cause we faint not.

But though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

How about that?

If you could if you could see me right now, you would be looking at two people.

The one you see, the outer man, is falling apart.

The one you cannot see is just as alive as he was the moment I got saved through faith in Jesus Christ.

My inner man stepped into eternal life.

There's not a stopwatch on it, not a clock on it, not a calendar on it.

My inner man is brand new, newly saved, and will be a billion years from now.

That inward man is renewed day by day at the same time that the outward man is perishing.

Verse 17.

For our light affliction.

This is from a man that got beaten with rods thirty-nine times on a number of occasions.

This from a man who was stoned, who nearly starved to death, who was imprisoned, who twice suffered shipwreck.

He called it light affliction.

That's kind of embarrassing, isn't it?

If you think about the things we complain about.

But he says, our light affliction, which is but for a moment, and thank God for that.

I don't care how long you live, it's nothing compared to forever.

I don't care how many candles on your birthday cake, it's nothing compared to eternity.

Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more.

There's that word again, far better, far more exceeding.

An eternal weight of glory.

Wow.

We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Let's look at two key words here.

This is what kept Paul going through all his suffering.

The first word moment.

The second word temporal.

Now think about it.

Think about it.

Everything hurtful, if you are saved, if you are saved, everything hurtful is temporary.

That blessed hope, that longing for heaven, it's understandable, it is available, it's recommended, and I'm telling you, rather than live in anticipation of years of physical suffering, Paul lived in the anticipation of the momentary coming of the Lord.

He couldn't handle all that pain, but he could handle the thought that Jesus was on his way, and that's what kept him going.

You don't need a shrink, you need a Bible.

You don't need to pay for somebody to talk you out of it.

You need to freely hear a preacher encourage you to live through it.

Now, 2 Corinthians 5 continues the idea, verse 1, for we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Our physical body, it's called a house, a tabernacle, temporary dwelling place.

The tabernacle of the Old Testament was the temporary dwelling place for the ark.

The temple, that was the permanent dwelling place for the ark.

So what he's saying is we live in a temporary dwelling place, and it is eventually going to be dissolved.

Chapter five, verse one, Second Corinthians, that's the future of our bodies.

Come on, work 'em out, give them vitamins, take your minerals, eat health food, eat junk food, diet, put makeup on it, lift it, tuck it, trim it, exercise it eventually, eventually.

It's going to be to the worms what hamburgers are to you.

Suffer, suffer.

Just being realistic.

Just telling the truth.

You know the death rate over the past six thousand years, with all of our medical science and advancements, the death rate is one hundred percent.

You're living in a temporary dwelling place, verse two, for in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven.

How about that?

I'm moving out of this old house and moving into a new house.

Verse three, if so be, that being clothed we shall not be found naked, for we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, for we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

If you're listening right now and by some strange chance you're in this listening audience, but you're an atheist or a Hindu or an agnostic or a Buddhist or anything else, but a Christian, do you know what your great hope is?

Dying.

Dying.

That's it.

Dying.

Man, I want to get out of this body.

But I'm not just getting out of this body, I'm getting into a good one.

That's Christianity.

God in the Bible never asked you to just give up something.

But he told you you didn't have to worry about or feel bad about giving up something because he would replace it with something far better.

Far better.

God doesn't just take away the hurtful, he replaces it with something far better.

Now, verse 5, 2 Corinthians 5, 5.

Now, he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

Therefore, we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.

We are confident, I say, and willing rather, to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

If this is your last day on earth, you can be verse six always confident.

Verse eight you can be confident, knowing that as soon as you are absent from this body, you will be present with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Death for the Christian is not the end of life.

It is being freed from a body that brings so much, so much trouble and sorrow, receives so much trouble and sorrow.

It's to be freed from that body and to enter into the glorious presence of the Lord.

What a great thing it is to be saved through Jesus Christ.

In Colossians three, hopefully.

Colossians three, hopefully, verse number one, if ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth, for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

How about that?

We are looking forward to a day when what we now know by faith, when what God has now reckoned unto us is a visible reality that we are experiencing not just looking forward to.

Right now, right now, God in God's accounting, because Jesus' death has become my death, because Jesus' resurrection has become my resurrection, Jesus' dwelling place in heaven has become my dwelling place.

Now those are glorious truths.

It's accounted by God as being so, though I am not yet experiencing the full reality of these things which the Lord has done for me for you if you're saved.

But there is coming a day when the reckoning and the accounting will be our actual experience, and we will be in the presence of the Lord in a resurrection body and free forever from everything that ever brought a single tear to our eye.

Thanks be to God.

No wonder Philippians 1 says that to depart and be with Christ is far better.

In Revelation 21, Revelation 21, and starting at verse number one, the Bible says this, and I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea.

And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God.

Do you notice?

Do you notice?

According to the Holy Spirit, what is the first big deal?

The first thing to which he draws our attention about the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city.

Oh, you've got to get way down in the chapter to get to the description of the city itself.

But in verse three, God is with his people.

That's the important thing.

Verse four, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

There's the groaning over the world condition, and there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither should there be any more pain.

There's all the physical suffering.

For the former things are passed away.

And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.

And he said unto me, right, for these words are true and faithful, no tears, no death, no sorrow, no crying, no pain, no former things.

Is it any wonder that Philippians chapter one says having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better far better?

If the Lord doesn't come today, I intend on serving him tomorrow.

If the Lord doesn't come tomorrow, I intend on serving him the next day.

But if he comes this afternoon, that will be quite all right with me, because it will be far better, far better for me to be in heaven with Jesus than to be down here serving him.

Is that the truth?

That's the absolute truth.

My friend, your financial situation may get better, it may get worse.

The home in which you live, you may live in a nicer home five years from now than you do today, or you may lose your nice home and live in one of lower quality.

You might make a vast number of new friends, or you might lose all your friends.

I do not know if what awaits you is sickness or health, richer or poorer, better or worse.

I don't know.

Nobody knows.

That's why the vows are spoken in that way when two people pledge to spend their lives together, because none of us knows.

But here's what I know of a certainty.

Whether you are saved or lost, I know this for sure about you.

Your physical body is going to give out.

I know that of an absolute fact.

It it is only good for so many miles.

It is only good for so many years.

So I know that about your physical body.

Now, if you are saved today, you know Jesus Christ as your Savior.

If you are saved, your future is to one day leave behind the physical body that is wearing out or will have worn out, and you will leave that body to enter the presence of the Lord, and you will find that everything about the place you have gone is far better than anything about the place you left behind.

That's the believer's hope.

That's the Christian's certainty.

Philippians one says we are confident, confident, absolutely certain that this very thing will come to pass just as God said it would.

We believe him, we trust him, we thank him, we praise him, not just for making our lives down here so much better, but for the hope of everlasting life when we leave this world behind.

What a savior.

What a savior.

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Until then, I'm Brother James.

May the Lord richly bless you.

And good day.